Bridge collapse: Routine trip home turns horrifying for travelers

Aug. 3, 2007

Safe and sound: Melissa Hughes holds her daughter Olivia on Wednesday after the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis. Hughes was driving the darker car in the background. Olivia was not in the car with her. / JERRY HOLT/Star Tribune

In it together: Kaleigh Swift (left), 10, hugs her friend Olivia Reynolds as they describe how they were rescued from the school bus stuck on the Interstate 35W bridge. / JIM MONE/Associated Press

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MINNEAPOLIS - It was 5:40 p.m. when Melissa Hughes wrapped up work. She piloted her red Ford Escort through the streets that lead to I-35W, eager to get home and see her 3-month-old daughter.

About the same time, 10-year-old Kaleigh Swift settled into a seat in the ninth row of a school bus exhilarated by a day spent at Bunker Beach Water Park. As the bus inched through heavy traffic on I-35W, the children sang songs.

Traffic usually is heavy on 35. On Wednesday, it seemed to Hughes to be even worse than usual, with construction shutting down several lanes.

Jay Reeves also was headed home, leaving his office downtown. At a few minutes after 6 p.m., he was still just getting started, driving down the West River Parkway. About 100 yards ahead, he could see the I-35W bridge overhead, arching over his route home. As he drove toward the bridge, he saw something that made his heart stop.

It was the bridge. And it was moving. It happened in a split-second - an eruption of "moving green metal in a cloud of rust-colored dust," he said.

"My brain said, 'This is not supposed to happen.' "

On the bridge, Hughes' view tumbled around her.

"All of a sudden, things were up in the air. Things weren't on the ground anymore," she said. "I swear I saw a construction worker in midair. Then I had that free-falling feeling."

Kaleigh and her friends screamed as the road fell out from underneath them. "I heard a creaking noise, and then we just started falling," she said.

And then, it was over.

It was quiet at first. Then, there was screaming. From the cars around them, pancaked underneath slabs of cement and rebar, came cries for help.

As Reeves pulled onto the shoulder and opened his car door, it was the first thing he heard - the children's voices, screaming from inside the bus.

It was a horrible sound. Yet it was the most wonderful sound he could have hoped for. It meant that, inside that bus, the children were alive.

In her car, Hughes was alive, too - but dazed.

As suddenly as it plunged, her car had stopped. Now, she heard a huge crash as her back window exploded. Later, she realized the noise had come from a black pickup that had flipped and fallen on top of her car.

But she was OK. She walked down to the area of flat ground near where the bridge span now lay. She dug out her cell phone and called her husband.

Meanwhile, Reeves made his way forward. "Screaming kids are good," he said. "That means they're alive and full of a lot of energy. As a paramedic, that's the best thing, I'll tell you. If it's quiet, that means I've got a busload of children who can't help themselves."

"My only priority was to get those people off the bridge," he said. The bridge was groaning, and he was afraid it would collapse further.

People climbed up and helped the kids out of the bus. "Someone handed a kid down to me," Reeves said.

They were the lucky ones, said Dr. John Hick, an emergency room physician and assistant medical director for emergency medical services at the Hennepin County Medical Center.